jennie-li

[jennie-li]

Documentation of the research and development process & evidence of research into historical and contemporary practices 

#Sketchbook

At first, I planned to conduct an interview with her: interviewing her mental problems and her depression. But then I found that this did not work because of two reasons. One is that simply because of I am knowing her too much, that I do not make others understand what I know about her simply through a few questions. The second is because instead of presenting her weakness (such as her happiness and pain) to the audience through photography, I might be more willing to leave our secrets to myself.

If the final results of my project are judged from the perspective of some commercial photographer, they are by no means of "beautiful" (because they show more body details that only I can observe, which are not as perfect as what we saw on advertisement), but I am more inclined to say that this project is my image which presents the views of a girl I know too much about. At the same time, my modeling career also makes me rethink about taking pictures of beautiful women while we ignore (or deliberately cover up) our unperfect body details. Women are beautiful, there is nothing wrong, but this beauty is not without flaws. There is a price behind this of stereotype male gaze thoughts. And this is exactly what this project is about, also one of the concepts I want to express through photography in the future study.

[jennie-li]

The working process

The Canon DSL camera we use, a 24mm-70mm lens, an artificial light with a soft light umbrella. 

There were three people in total while finishing this project: Me, my friend as modal and one assistant (a mutual friend of me and the model who loves doing photography). Compared to me, my assistant knows more technically details on how to use the digital camera and to create artificial light. The Canon DSL camera we use, a 24mm-70mm lens, an artificial light and a soft light umbrella. As I mentioned before, this project is not only my own shooting, but more likely to be a collaboration between the three of us (for the lighting positions used and specific technical parameters, please refer to my sketchbook).

We selected one of my friends' art studios in located in Beijing. The place is being renovated, it is almost a ruin, there is nothing left there but this is what we truly want (the ruins of nothing eliminates possible external interference factors). In the process of shooting, we would always discuss everything together: for instance, on how to present her in my eyes through my camera: a beautiful but imperfect girl that we know. I believe that these images would clearly speak for themself.

[jennie-li]

To present HER through my eyes:

When drafting this project, I initially planned to show others the story of a friend of mine through the form of photography. It presents me what I saw about her mental illness, her depression, and the public's stigmatization of the concept of "cure" depression. In my understanding of her, this is an absurd misunderstanding. Her thoughts are more like the endless cycle of happiness, loss, pain, and occasionally crazy happiness. . . Her world is divided like we see the picture from a kaleidoscope.

But later following our communication and my research, I changed my mind: I think it is an arrogant behavior to use my own photos to determine the appearance of others. With reference to Regarding The Pain Of Others by Susan Sontag, I decided to alter my original definition of this project: it will no longer be a story about a girl with her depression, but a friend of mine, and the girl in my eyes who struggles with her youth in her 20’s. I tried to distinguish everything in her world through my images, to present her gender, her body, also the family conflicts in our mind.